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Setting
What is a "Setting"? "In works of narrative (especially fictional), the literary element setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. Setting has been referred to as story world or milieu to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction." -- From the "Setting" article on Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia This wiki describes two main parts of what is Equinox. One is mechanics, the part that describes all the dice rolls, attributes, characteristics, statistics, etc., meaning everything that is used to quantify and calculate the gameplay process. Another part is setting. This part describes the world around, its history, culture, traditions, politics, styles, factions, relations, religions, etc. It might affect mechanics (and vice versa), but generally it is independent from the system. The World of Equinox, a Brief Introduction Obviously, one cannot describe every single detail of a sufficiently complex setting in just a few paragraphs meant for introduction, so expect some details to be omitted, be ready that exceptions might exist and more research would be necessary to answer some questions. With that in mind, let's see what is the world and Equinox... Imagine a world parallel to ours. It is the equivalent of our late XIX century there, with a lot of details one might recognize. The country borders, for instance, are very close to what you would expect, however, everything that we know as countries now would be just provinces or something similar in this world, all the land divided by a few enormous empires, in one of which, the Empire of Eberia, spanning throughout most of the Europe, the game is supposed to take place. The empires sustain a very unstable peace between each other, with armies near the borders ready to strike at any moment, ancient wizards of unfathomable power locked for centuries in their impregnable towers with just one goal: destroy as much of enemy's forces, cities, resources, people, land, or whatever it is they can destroy, should the war begin. Everyone understands that starting a serious conflict would mean the death of untold millions, and this is the only reason why skirmishes spontaneously happening at the borders from time to time never get to spread. If needed, their own lords would give the order to eliminate those who would risk the peace, however forced it is. Not that the situation in the Empires is all that better. Of course, it's generally more stable, especially if you live in a big city, the one where the gas lights are a norm and mechanized cabs drive on the streets, but not everyone is safe outside of these bastions of civilization. With the armies stationed and ready to war far away, the guards can not keep up with every internal threat, be it gangs of bandits, sometimes ransacking entire villages in search of valuables, renegades of other varieties, such as insane mages, power-hungry cults and blasphemous heretics, or dangerous creatures still appearing in the wilderness. The towns aren't exactly calm and peaceful either, but unless it is a big and organized group or an individual of great power, the threats here are rarely endangering those of rank or riches. Obviously, nobody is happy with the situation, which is why it is a long-standing tradition to have guilds, brotherhoods, orders, companies etc, dedicated to one and only purpose: finding and hiring mercenaries. Or adventurers, or whatever else they would like to be called. They operate almost like a very specialized and localized militia, responding to various threats and completing dangerous, but necessary tasks for gold and fame. Of course, some might have other motivations, some of the guilds don't even pay their members at all, and thus are proud to call themselves the defenders of all good on purely altruistic ground. But most of them still get paid by the local governments and serve almost as a sister group to the guardsmen. On the other hand, this world is also a lot different from ours back in late XIX century. The most obvious difference is, of course, the existence of magic and all the things that stem from it. Not everybody in the world of Equinox would say that all the things we call supernatural are a byproduct of magic, but some philosophers and researchers of the arcane think that even gods of this world, which are, by the way, demonstrably real beings, are somehow related to the mysterious energy they call magic. Some things are not debated though: a lot of strange and surreal creatures, known in our world only from folktales, myths and legends, or even unknown at all, are undeniable reality there, and as such it is undeniable that their origin was, at some point, affected by magic, be it intentionally or accidentally, whether the effect was strong or weak, and whatever exact force produced the result. But not every such creature is animal-like, some of them are very close to humans, like elves or orcs, all of comparable intellect, and some are even considered to be of higher intelligence. A lot of them live with humans as equals or almost equals, but some have their own, usually small or hard to reach, lands, governments and laws. More than likely for all these reasons the history of this world was not an exact copy of our own. One of the most obvious things being that gunpowder was never invented: a lucky accident of a Chinese healer trying to create another cure for some ailment was either lost in time or never performed in the first place. After all, there are actual potions, imbued with magic, that, unlike most of the "medicine" stemming from middle ages, indeed work and work miracles. Other things include a boom in the fields of practical science, that, with the help of the wizards, turned the Industrial Revolution into something else entirely. Where we had trains and steel mills, the people in this world are almost at the level of late XX century, with the crucial difference being that most of their inventions are based on steam and metal, instead of electricity and plastic. It is impossible to list all the things that are part of the lives of ordinary people in the world of Equinox, but that never existed in our world or even never could have existed without magic to begin with. Another important difference is religion: with beings of inhuman power being undoubtedly real, appearing to mortals, granting their powers to their chosen and fighting between themselves, the religions of this world are entirely different from out own. The main religion of the Empire of Eberia is a worship of the three Sun Gods, the Church of Divine Light, governed by the Holy Triarchiat. The Luminous Collegium, a religious branch of the government, has power similar to the Senate, and even the Emperors are crowned only with the blessing of the Holy Triarchiat. Worship of other gods is either ignored, such as in cases of the gods of fertility and harvest among the farmers, gods of the sea for the seafarers (which is, by the way, a much more dangerous endeavor than one might think - the deeps hide creatures of great power...) etc, or outright considered heretics, blasphemers and cultists, such as the followers of all six gods of Darkness. In general, a life of a normal person in the world of Equinox would not be the same as the life of a normal person in our world, even though on the surface it might be seen as very similar. Magic, technology, gods, guilds, monsters - all of this changes things. Sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives, sometimes... they do not. And it is your job to bring the scales to the desired position. Intended Tone Generally, this is supposed to be a serious setting. There might be elements that one might find funny, and, of course, not everything is intended to be bleak and humorless. However, this game was not planned to be a comedy, or even a light-hearted adventure for all the family. Of course, nobody can forbid you to play it as you'd like, but just know that this was not the intent of this system then. It is, however, intended to be at least somewhat heroic, even though still trying to keep a somewhat realistic tone, or as much realistic as it could be, given the setting itself. This means that it is not supposed to be unforgiving random slaughterhouse, chewing your characters and spitting them out, but it is still grounded in reality, meaning that your actions (or inaction) would have consequences, both short- and long-term. You will more than likely be forced to make hard decisions and live with the results. Therefore you need to pay attention, be thoughtful and responsible in the decisions you make for your character. Some elements of the setting might be considered dark, macabre and outright disturbing. This is to be expected as well. The level of "quirkiness" and "whimsy", sometimes seen in both fantasy and steampunk, is supposed to be dialed down as well. If this looks too gloomy for you, know, however, that this is also supposed to be a game of interesting and complex stories. Of course, nobody can guarantee you that, but it is intended to be as helpful as possible for making an intellectually rewarding story. And again, nobody can force you to play or GM according to this and only this tone. You are absolutely free to make this into a comedy or just a dungeon crawl if you want to. This section is written only to make you understand the intent behind the creation of this setting.